Bezanozano

The Bezanozano, or Antankay, were among the earliest Malagasy peoples, holding the forested Ankay region between the Betsimisaraka lowlands and the Merina highlands, around Moramanga. Tradition linked them with the Vazimba, the island's first inhabitants, whose tombs there were places of pilgrimage. The Bezanozano name means those of many small plaits, after a traditional hairstyle.

In the eighteenth century they grew rich as middlemen in the slave and cattle trade between the highlands and European and Arab ships on the east coast; Moramanga became the chief market, and they allied with the Betsimisaraka Kingdom.

Around the turn of the nineteenth century Andrianampoinimerina of Imerina reduced them to vassals, and in 1817 his son Radama I completed the conquest. Under Merina rule they were drafted into unpaid porterage between Antananarivo and Toamasina, depopulating the Ankay until their name became a byword for slave.